3 books to know The Devil. Джон Мильтон

      His liberty then being thus ascertained, three things seem to be material for us to give an account of, in order to form this part of his history.

      1. What his business is on this globe of earth which we vulgarly call the world; how he acts among us; what affairs mankind and he have together; and how far his conduct here relates to us, and ours is, or may be. influenced by him.

      2. Where his principal residence is; and whether he has not a particular empire of his own, to which he retreats upon proper occasions; where he entertains his friends when they come under his particular administration; and where, when he gets any victory over his enemies, he carries his prisoners of war.

      3. What may probably be the great business this black emperor has at present upon his hands, either in this world, or out of it; and by what agents he works.

      As these things may, perhaps, run promiscuously through the course of this whole work, and frequently be touched at under other branches of the Devil’s history; so I do not propose them as heads of chapters, or particular sections, for the order of discourse to be handled apart; for (by the way) as Satan’s actings have not been the most regular things in the world, so, in our discourse about him, it must not be expected that we can always tie ourselves down to order and regularity either as to time, or place, or persons; for Satan being a loose, ungoverned fellow, we must be content to trace him where we can find him.

      It is true, in the foregoing chapter, I showed you the Devil entered into the herd ecclesiastic, and gave you some account of the first successful step he took with mankind, since the Christian epocha; how having secretly managed both temporal and spiritual power apart, and by themselves, he now united them in point of management, and brought the church usurpation and the army’s usurpation together; the pope to bless the general in deposing and murdering his master the emperor; and the general to recognize the pope in de throning his master Christ Jesus.

      From this time forward, you are to allow the Devil a mystical empire in this world; not an action of moment done without him, not a treason but he has an “hand in it, not a tyrant but he prompts him, not a government but he has an agent in it; not a fool but he tickles him, not a knave but he guides him; he has a finger in every fraud, a key to every cabinet, from the Divan at Constantinople, to the Mississippi in France, and to the South Sea; from the first attack upon the Christian world, in the person of the Romish Antichrist, down to the bull Unigenitus; and from the mixture of St. Peter and Confucius in China, to the holy office in Spain; and down to the Emlins and Dod wells of the current age.

      How he has managed, and does manage, and how, in all probability, he will manage till his kingdom shall come to a period, and how, at last, he will probably be managed himself, inquire within the Sacred page, and you shall know farther.

      Chapter 3

      OF THE MANNER OF SATAN’S acting and carrying on his affairs in this world; and particularly of his ordinary ivorkings in the dark, by possession and agitation.

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      THE DEVIL BEING THUS reduced to act upon mankind by stratagem only, it remains to inquire how he performs, and which way he directs his attacks. The faculties of man are a kind of a garrison in a strong castle, which, as they defend it on the one hand under the command of the reasoning power of man’s soul, so they are prescribed on the other hand, and can’t sally out without leave; for the governor of a fort does not permit his soldiers to hold any correspondence with the enemy, without special order and direction. Now the great inquiry before us is, how comes the Devil to a parley with us? How does he converse with our senses, and with the understanding? How does he reach us? Which way does he come at the affections, and which way does he move the passions? It is a little difficult to discover this treasonable correspondence; and that difficulty is, indeed, the Devil’s advantage, and, for aught I see, the chief advantage he has over mankind.

      It is also a great inquiry here, whether the Devil knows our thoughts or no? If I may give my opinion, I am with the negative; I deny that he knows anything of our thoughts, except of those thoughts which he puts us upon thinking; for I will not doubt, but he has the art to inject thoughts, and to revive dormant thoughts in us. It is not so wild a scheme as some take it to be, that Mr. Milton lays down, to represent the Devil injecting corrupt desires, and wandering thoughts, into the head of Eve, by dreams; and that he brought her to dream whatever he put into her thoughts, by whispering to her vocally when she was asleep; and, to this end, he imagines the Devil laying himself close to her ear, in the shape of a toad, when she was fast asleep; I say, this is not so wild a scheme, seeing even now, if you can whisper anything close to the ear of a person in a deep sleep, so as to speak dis tinctly to the person, and yet not awaken him, as has been frequently tried, the person sleeping shall dream distinctly of what you say to him; nay, shall drearn the very words you say.

      We have then no more to ask, but how the Devil can convey himself to the ear of a sleeping person; and it is granted then, that he may have power to make us dream what he pleases. But this is not all; for if he can so forcibly, by his invisible application, cause us to dream what he pleases, why can he not, with the same facility, prompt our thoughts, whether sleeping or waking’? To dream, is nothing else but to think sleeping; and we have abundance of deep-headed gentlemen among us, who give us ample testimony, that they dream waking.

      But if the Devil can prompt us to dream, that is to say, to think; yet, if he does not know our thoughts, how then can he tell whether the whisper had its effect? The answer is plain; the Devil, like the angler, baits the hook; if the fish bite, he lies ready to take the advantage; he whispeas to the imagination, and then waits to see how it works; as Naomi said to Ruth, chap. hi. ver. 18. “Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall; for the man will not be at rest until he have finished the thing.” Thus, when the Devil had whispered to Eve in her sleep, according to Milton, and suggested mischief to her imagination, he only sat still to see how the matter would work; for he knew, if it took with her, he should hear more of it; and then, by finding her alone the next day, without her ordinary guard, her husband, he presently concluded she had swallowed the bait; and so attacked her afresh.

      A small deal of craft, and less, by far, than we have reason to believe the Devil is master of, will serve to discover, whether such and such thoughts as he knows he has suggested, have taken place or no; the action of the person presently discovers it, at least to him that lies always upon the watch, and has every word; every gesture, every step, we take subsequent to his operation, open to him. It may therefore, for aught we know, be a great mistake, and what most of us are guilty of, to tell our dreams to one another in the morning, after we have been disturbed with them in the night; for if the Devil converses with us so insensibly, as some are of opinion he does, that is to say, if he can hear as far as we can see, we may be telling our story to him indeed, when we think we are only talking to one another.

      This brings me most naturally to the important in quiry, whether the Devil can walk about the world invisibly or no? The truth is, this is no question to me; for as I have taken away his visibility already, and have denied him all prescience of futurity too, and have proved he cannot know our thoughts, nor put any force upon persons or actions, if we should take away his invisibility too, we should undevil him quite, to all intents and purposes, as to any mischief he could do; nay, it would banish him the world, and he might even go and seek his fortune somewhere else; for if he could neither be visible or invisible, neither act in public or in private; he could neither have business or being in this sphere, nor could we be any way concerned with him.

      The Devil therefore most certainly has a power and liberty of moving about in this world, after some manner or another; this is verified as well by way of allegory, as by way of history, in the scripture itself; and as the first strongly suggests and supposes it to be so, the last positively asserts it; and not to crowd this work with quotations from a book which we have not much to do with in the Devil’s story, at least not much to his satisfaction, I only hint his personal appearance to our Saviour in the wilderness, where it is said, “ the Devil taketh him up to an exceeding high